Good things come to those who wait, or so the age-old adage goes. Rochester Americans coach Ron Rolston will tell you it’s true, too.

Rolston waited since the summer for Patrick Rissmiller to join his team and now he has him in the lineup.

Rissmiller, 34, signed a 25-game professional tryout contract with the Amerks in the afternoon and helped them defeat the Syracuse Crunch 5-3 tonight. He scored one goal and assisted on another.

“Any time you can contribute it’s nice,” Rissmiller said after the Amerks improved to 24-15-2-1.

Joining a new team isn’t always easy. New teammates, new systems, new coaches, new styles, new sticks, new tape, whatever.

But Rissmiller has done this before. In the previous two seasons he changed teams and organizations four times. Hartford to Grand Rapids to the Chicago Wolves to Lake Erie to Rochester. Yes, he was an Amerk for eight games in March in 2010-11.

“I think I keep recycling old teams,” he joked, referring his January tryout with the Worcester Sharks. The San Jose Sharks were his original organization, way back in 2002-03 after he finished a four-year collegiate career at Holy Cross.

So while not many faces on the team are familiar — he played with assistant coach Chris Taylor on that 2010-11 Amerks team — he knows how to handle the “I’m-the-new-guy” situation.

“I would say yes, normally (it’s not always easy right away to join a new team) but I’ve done it enough, so no,” Rissmiller said.

Rolston said he wanted to sign Rissmiller in the summer. He liked what he saw last season when the veteran left winger (and center) scored 13 goals, 16 assists and 29 points in 49 games for the Lake Erie Monsters.

But as July became August and an NHL lockout seemed certain, the Amerks — and every other AHL team — lost roster spots. The NHL parent teams had youngers on entry-level contracts coming down to play. For the Amerks, it was center Cody Hodgson and left winger Marcus Foligno.

Now that the NHL is up and running, and with injuries surely to strike the parent Buffalo Sabres in the compressed 48-game season, the Amerks need depth. When Rissmiller was released from the PTO by Worcester on Monday, the Amerks plucked him off the free-agent market.

“He has good size (6-foot-4, 220 pounds), good vision,” Rolston said.

More important: he’s a good guy in the room and as a teammate.

“Chris (Taylor) knows about his character as a person,” Rolston said. “I really like the group overall, the chemistry, the character, so anyone we bring in has to fit in.”

Rolston has good reason to like his team right now. The Amerks have won five in a row and seven of the past eight. They are in tune to what the coaches want; namely, they’re not gambling, they’re not turning pucks over all the time at either blue line, and they’re worrying about the defensive zone first.

“Guys are playing the right way, they’re sacrificing for each other,” Rolston said.

Their defensive corps looks so much better now, and they are indeed playing better. But that’s because they’re not left to defend 2-on-1 and 3-on-2 fastbreaks all the time. They’re not trying to scramble to make up for a forward’s error in coverage.

Rissmiller can help at both ends. This is his 11th pro season. He has played a combined 721 games in the NHL and AHL.

And he’s fresh. He was sitting at home in Cleveland until the lockout ended.

Which wasn’t so bad. In late October his wife, Michelle, gave birth to their first child, Eleanor (she’ll be called Ellie). There were opportunities to play in Europe, but with a baby on the way, and then born, Rissmiller didn’t have any interest is crossing the Atlantic.

“I was happy to come here,” he said.

* * * * * * *

The addition was negated, at least temporarily, because right winger Evan Rankin suffered an ankle injury.

It could be a sprain, and a severe sprain is far worse for a hockey player than a break, players always say. Sprains begin to heal, the player feels great, and then he tries to play and rolls over on it again and he’s back to square one and out for several more weeks.

But until Rankin is examined by the team doctor the severity of the injury won’t be known. He surely won’t be playing in Abbotsford Tuesday and Wednesday.

* * * * * * *

The Amerks have won five of six games against the Crunch, remarkable since this current Syracuse team still has 14 members of last year’s Calder Cup championship team that played in Norfolk.

* * * * * * *

Phil Varone helped set up the most important goal tonight. His dogged attack on the forecheck and then refusal to be denied in setting up Rick Schofield enabled the Amerks to regain the lead, 2-1, just 38 seconds after Richard Panik had tied the score for Syracuse.

Varone was upset because he lost coverage on Panik on the Crunch goal. He had a chance for redemption because Rolston left his line with wingers Schofield and Max Legault on the ice for the ensuing faceoff.

“My guy scored … so I wanted to get it back,” Varone said. “You can’t try to win it on one shift but in my mind I wanted to get it back for the guys.”

Said Rolston: Obviously it was real important for that next line to take charge, to not be passive but to be proactive.”

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About Kevin

Kevin Oklobzija has been covering the Rochester Americans and the American Hockey League, as well as the Buffalo Sabres and the NHL, since the puck dropped on the 1985-86 pro hockey season. He has covered the Calder Cup and Stanley Cup playoffs, as well as hockey at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, Salt Lake City and Turin, Italy. Hockey's O-Zone will provide news and views on the sport. If you have a comment, Email Kevin, and we'll even make it easy for you -- you don't even need to spell his last name: kevino@democratandchronicle.com.